When all its phases are taken in the aggregate, Broadway holds a position that is unique and pre-eminent among the great avenues of the world. In this book Mr. Jenkins has presented the whole history of Broadway, old and new, through all the miles of its long course from the Bowling Green to Albany; its historic associations from pre-Revolutionary times to the present, its theatres and the actors that made them famous, its literary incidents and personalities, the busy hum of city life that rises heavenward between its towering buildings, and all the abundant energy that flows through it ceaselessly.

Broadway runs the length of Manhattan Island, roughly parallel to the North River (the portion of the Hudson River bordering Manhattan), from Bowling Green at the south to Inwood at the northern tip of the island. South of Columbus Circle, it is a one-way southbound street. Since 2009, vehicular traffic has been banned at Times Square between 47th and 42nd Streets, and at Herald Square between 35th and 33rd Streets as part of a pilot program; the right-of-way is intact and reserved for cyclists and pedestrians. From the northern shore of Manhattan, Broadway crosses Spuyten Duyvil Creek via the Broadway Bridge and continues through Marble Hill (a discontinuous portion of the borough of Manhattan) and the Bronx into Westchester County. U.S. 9 continues to be known as Broadway until its junction with NY 117.

Lower Manhattan

The section of lower Broadway from its origin at Bowling Green to City Hall Park is the historical location for the city’s ticker-tape parades, and is sometimes called the „Canyon of Heroes“ during such events. West of Broadway, as far as Canal Street, was the city’s fashionable residential area until circa 1825; landfill has more than tripled the area, and the Hudson River shore now lies far to the west, beyond Tribeca and Battery Park City.

Broadway marks the boundary between Greenwich Village to the west and the East Village to the east, passing Astor Place. It is a short walk from there to New York University near Washington Square Park, which is at the foot of Fifth Avenue. A bend in front of Grace Church allegedly avoids an earlier tavern; from 10th Street it begins its long diagonal course across Manhattan, headed almost due north.

Midtown Manhattan

Because Broadway preceded the grid that the Commissioners‘ Plan of 1811 imposed on the island, Broadway crosses midtown Manhattan diagonally, intersecting with both the east-west streets and north-south avenues. Broadway’s intersections with avenues, marked by „squares“ (some merely triangular slivers of open space), have induced some interesting architecture, such as the Flatiron Building.

At Union Square, Broadway crosses 14th Street, merges with Fourth Avenue, and continues its diagonal uptown course from the Square’s northwest corner; Union Square is the only location wherein the physical section of Broadway is discontinuous in Manhattan (other portions of Broadway in Manhattan are pedestrian-only plazas). At Madison Square, the location of the Flatiron Building, Broadway crosses Fifth Avenue at 23rd Street, and is discontinuous to vehicles for a one-block stretch between 24th and 25th Streets. At Greeley Square (West 33rd Street), Broadway crosses Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas), and is discontinuous to vehicles. Macy’s Herald Square department store, one block north of the vehicular discontinuity, is located on the northwest corner of Broadway and West 34th Street and southwest corner of Broadway and West 35th Street; it is one of the largest department stores in the world.

One famous stretch near Times Square, where Broadway crosses Seventh Avenue in midtown Manhattan, is the home of many Broadway theatres, housing an ever-changing array of commercial, large-scale plays, particularly musicals. This area of Manhattan is often called the Theater District or the Great White Way, a nickname originating in the headline „Found on the Great White Way“ in the edition of February 3, 1902 of the New York Evening Telegram. The journalistic nickname was inspired by the millions of lights on theater marquees and billboard advertisements that illuminate the area. After becoming the city’s de facto red-light district in the 1960s and 1970s (as can be seen in the films Taxi Driver and Midnight Cowboy), since the late 1980s Times Square has emerged as a family tourist center, in effect being Disneyfied following the company’s purchase and renovation of the New Amsterdam Theatre on 42nd Street in 1993.

Until June 2007, The New York Times, from which the Square gets its name, was published at offices at 239 West 43rd Street; the paper stopped printing papers there on June 15, 2007.

Upper West Side

At the southwest corner of Central Park, Broadway crosses Eighth Avenue (called Central Park West north of 59th Street) at West 59th Street and Columbus Circle; on the site of the former New York Coliseum convention center is the new shopping center at the foot of the Time Warner Center, headquarters of Time Warner. From Columbus Circle northward, Broadway becomes a wide boulevard to 169th Street; it retains landscaped center islands that separate northbound from southbound traffic. The medians are a vestige of the central mall of „The Boulevard“ that had become the spine of the Upper West Side, and many of these contain public seating.

Broadway intersects with Columbus Avenue (known as Ninth Avenue south of West 59th Street) at West 65th and 66th Streets where the Juilliard School and Lincoln Center, both well-known performing arts landmarks, as well as the Manhattan New York Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are located.

Between West 70th and 73rd Streets, Broadway intersects with Amsterdam Avenue (known as 10th Avenue south of West 59th Street). The wide intersection of the two thoroughfares has historically been the site of numerous traffic accidents and pedestrian casualties, partly due to the long crosswalks. Two small triangular plots of land were created at points where Broadway slices through Amsterdam Avenue. One is a tiny fenced-in patch of shrubbery and plants at West 70th Street called Sherman Square (although it and the surrounding intersection have also been known collectively as Sherman Square), and the other triangle is a lush tree-filled garden bordering Amsterdam Avenue from just above West 72nd Street to West 73rd Street. Named Verdi Square in 1921 for its monument to Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi, which was erected in 1909, this triangular sliver of public space was designated a Scenic Landmark by the Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1974, one of nine city parks that have received the designation. In the 1960s and 1970s, the area surrounding both Verdi Square and Sherman Square was known by local drug users and dealers as „Needle Park“, and was featured prominently in the gritty 1971 dramatic film The Panic in Needle Park, directed by Jerry Schatzberg and starring Al Pacino in his second onscreen role.

The original brick and stone shelter leading to the entrance of the 72nd Street subway station, one of the first 28 subway stations in Manhattan, remains located on one of the wide islands in the center of Broadway, on the south side of West 72nd Street. For many years, all traffic on Broadway flowed on either side of this median and its subway entrance, and its uptown lanes went past it along the western edge of triangular Verdi Square. In 2001 and 2002, renovation of the historic 72nd Street station and the addition of a second subway control house and passenger shelter on an adjacent center median just north of 72nd Street, across from the original building, resulted in the creation of a public plaza with stone pavers and extensive seating, connecting the newer building with Verdi Square, and making it necessary to divert northbound traffic to Amsterdam Avenue for one block. While Broadway’s southbound lanes at this intersection were unaffected by the new construction, its northbound lanes are no longer contiguous at this intersection. Drivers can either continue along Amsterdam Avenue to head uptown or turn left on West 73rd Street to resume traveling on Broadway.

Several notable apartment buildings are in close proximity to this intersection, including The Ansonia, its ornate architecture dominating the cityscape here. After the Ansonia first opened as a hotel, live seals were kept in indoor fountains inside its lobby. Later, it was home to the infamous Plato’s Retreat nightclub. Immediately north of Verdi Square is the formidable Apple Bank for Savings building, formerly the Central Savings Bank, which was built in 1926 and designed to resemble the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Broadway is also home to the Beacon Theatre at West 74th Street, designated a national landmark in 1979 and still in operation as a concert venue after its establishment in 1929 as a vaudeville and music hall, and „sister“ venue to Radio City Music Hall.

At its intersection with West 78th Street, Broadway shifts direction and continues directly uptown and aligned approximately with the Commissioners‘ grid. Past the bend are the historic Apthorp apartment building, built in 1908, and the First Baptist Church in the City of New York, incorporated in New York in 1762, its current building on Broadway erected in 1891. The road heads north and passes historically important apartment houses such as the Belnord, the Astor Court Building, and the Art Nouveau Cornwall.

At Broadway and 95th Street is Symphony Space, established in 1978 as home to avant-garde and classical music and dance performances in the former Symphony Theatre, which was originally built in 1918 as a premier „music and motion-picture house“. At 99th Street, Broadway passes between the controversial skyscrapers of the Ariel East and West.

At 107th Street, Broadway merges with West End Avenue, with the intersection forming Straus Park with its Titanic Memorial by Augustus Lukeman.

Northern Manhattan and the Bronx

Broadway then passes the campus of Columbia University at 116th Street in Morningside Heights, in part on the tract that housed the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum from 1808 until it moved to Westchester County in 1894. Still in Morningside Heights, Broadway passes the park-like campus of Barnard College. Next, the Gothic quadrangle of Union Theological Seminary and the brick buildings of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America with their landscaped interior courtyards face one another across Broadway. On the next block is the Manhattan School of Music.

Broadway then runs past the proposed uptown campus of Columbia University, and the main campus of CUNY–City College near 135th Street; the Gothic buildings of the original City College campus are out of sight, a block to the east. Also to the east are the brownstones of Hamilton Heights. Hamilton Place is a surviving section of Bloomingdale Road, and originally the address of Alexander Hamilton’s house, The Grange, which has been moved.

Broadway achieves a verdant, park-like effect, particularly in the spring, when it runs between the uptown Trinity Church Cemetery and the former Trinity Chapel, now the Church of the Intercession near 155th Street.

Broadway crosses the Harlem River on the Broadway Bridge to Marble Hill. Afterward, it then enters the Bronx, where it is the eastern border of Riverdale and the western border of Van Cortlandt Park. At 253rd Street, NY 9A joins with U.S. 9 and Broadway. (NY 9A splits off Broadway at Ashburton Avenue in Yonkers.)

Westchester County

The northwestern corner of the park marks the city limit and Broadway enters Yonkers, where it is now known as South Broadway. It trends ever westward, closer to the Hudson River, remaining a busy urban commercial street. In downtown Yonkers, it drops close to the river, becomes North Broadway and 9A leaves via Ashburton Avenue. Broadway climbs to the nearby ridgetop runs parallel to the river and the railroad, a few blocks east of both as it passes St. John’s Riverside Hospital. The neighborhoods become more residential and the road gently undulates along the ridgetop. In Yonkers, Broadway passes historic Philipse Manor house, which dates back to colonial America.

It remains Broadway as it leaves Yonkers for Hastings-on-Hudson, where it splits into separate north and south routes for 0.6 miles (1.0 km). The trees become taller and the houses, many separated from the road by stone fences, become larger. Another National Historic Landmark, the John William Draper House, was the site of the first astrophotograph of the Moon.

In the next village, Dobbs Ferry, Broadway has various views of the Hudson River while passing through the residential section. Broadway passes by the Old Croton Aqueduct and nearby the shopping district of the village. After intersecting with Ashford Avenue, Broadway passes Mercy College, then turns left again at the center of town just past South Presbyterian Church, headed for equally comfortable Ardsley-on-Hudson and Irvington. Villa Lewaro, the home of Madam C.J. Walker, the first African-American millionaire, is along the highway here. At the north end of the village of Irvington, a memorial to writer Washington Irving, after whom the village was renamed, marks the turnoff to his home at Sunnyside. Entering into the southern portion of Tarrytown, Broadway passes by historic Lyndhurst mansion, a massive mansion built along the Hudson River built in the early 1800s.

North of here, at the Kraft Foods technical center, the Tappan Zee Bridge becomes visible. After crossing under the Thruway and I-87 again, here concurrent with I-287, and then intersecting with the four-lane NY 119, where 119 splits off to the east, Broadway becomes the busy main street of Tarrytown. Christ Episcopal Church, where Irving worshiped, is along the street. Many high quality restaurants and shops are along this main road. This downtown ends at the eastern terminus of NY 448, where Broadway slopes off to the left, downhill, and four signs indicate that Broadway turns left, passing the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow, another NHL. The road then enters Sleepy Hollow (formerly North Tarrytown), passing the visitors‘ center for Kykuit, the National Historic Landmark that was (and partially still is) the Rockefeller family’s estate. Broadway then passes the historic Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, which includes the resting place of Washington Irving and the setting for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

Broadway expands to four lanes at the trumpet intersection with NY 117, where it finally ends and U.S. 9 becomes Albany Post Road (and Highland Avenue) at the northern border of Sleepy Hollow, New York.

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The romantic history of the northern section of Greater New York from the days of Jonas Bronk, after whom the Bronx was named, through the centuries crowded with events that have issued into the present. The geographical landmarks acquire a new significance as around them this accurate historian of local events and conditions weaves the substantial fabric of fact and more sparingly the lighter web of tradition. Among his most interesting chapters are those touching on colonial manners and customs, the Bronx during the Revolution, the churches, early and later means of communication, and ferries and bridges.

The Bronx is the northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City, within the U.S. state of New York. It is geographically south of Westchester County; north and east of the island and borough of Manhattan to the south and west across the Harlem River; and north of the borough of Queens, across the East River. Of the five boroughs, the Bronx is the only one that has the majority of its area on the U.S. mainland and, with a land area of 42 square miles (109 km2) and a population of 1,455,720 in 2016, has the fourth-largest land area, the fourth-highest population, and the third-highest population density. Since 1914, the Bronx has had the same boundaries as Bronx County, a county of New York and the third most densely populated county in the United States.

The Bronx is divided by the Bronx River into a hillier section in the west, closer to Manhattan, and a flatter eastern section, closer to Long Island. East and west street addresses are divided by Jerome Avenue—the continuation of Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. The West Bronx was annexed to New York City in 1874, and the areas east of the Bronx River in 1895. Bronx County was separated from New York County in 1914 About a quarter of the Bronx’s area is open space, including Woodlawn Cemetery, Van Cortlandt Park, Pelham Bay Park, the New York Botanical Garden, and the Bronx Zoo in the borough’s north and center. These open spaces are situated primarily on land deliberately reserved in the late 19th century as urban development progressed north and east from Manhattan.

The name „Bronx“ originated with Jonas Bronck, who established the first settlement in the area as part of the New Netherland colony in 1639. The native Lenape were displaced after 1643 by settlers. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Bronx received many immigrant groups as it was transformed into an urban community, first from various European countries (particularly Ireland, Germany, and Italy) and later from the Caribbean region (particularly Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic), as well as African American migrants from the southern United States. This cultural mix has made the Bronx a wellspring of both Latin music and hip hop.

The Bronx contains one of the five poorest Congressional Districts in the United States, the 15th, but its wide diversity also includes affluent, upper-income and middle-income neighborhoods such as Riverdale, Fieldston, Spuyten Duyvil, Schuylerville, Pelham Bay, Pelham Gardens, Morris Park, and Country Club. The Bronx, particularly the South Bronx, saw a sharp decline in population, livable housing, and the quality of life in the late 1960s and the 1970s, culminating in a wave of arson. Since then the communities have shown significant redevelopment starting in the late 1980s before picking up pace from the 1990s until today.

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Stephen Jenkins has chosen for the subject of this volume the oldest and most northerly of the post roads: that over which the first postrider went; which echoed to the war-whoop of the savage, saw the passage of soldiers during the French Wars; beheld the flocking of the minutemen upon the Lexington Alarm, later became the pathway of countless thousands of emigrants on their way to the rich valleys of the Mohawk and the Genesee, or to the fertile prairies of the Middle West. By this route, via New Haven, Hartford, Springfield, and Worcester, a monthly mail was established in 1673, „the first mail upon the continent of America,“ as the author declares. He traces these pioneer settlements to their present positions as mauufacturing towns and cities.

The Boston Post Road was a system of mail-delivery routes between New York City and Boston, Massachusetts that evolved into one of the first major highways in the United States.

The three major alignments were the Lower Post Road (now U.S. Route 1 (US 1) along the shore via Providence, Rhode Island), the Upper Post Road (now US 5 and US 20 from New Haven, Connecticut by way of Springfield, Massachusetts), and the Middle Post Road (which diverged from the Upper Road in Hartford, Connecticut and ran northeastward to Boston via Pomfret, Connecticut).

In some towns, the area near the Boston Post Road has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places, since it was often the first road in the area, and some buildings of historical significance were built along it. The Boston Post Road Historic District, including part of the road in Rye, New York, has been designated a National Historic Landmark. The Post Road is also famous for milestones that date from the 18th century, many of which survive to this day. In parts of Connecticut, it is also known as Route 6.

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Mr. Chevalier’s chief merits as a traveller consist in the fact, that he directs his attention to the most important concerns and interests of the people, among whom he travels. He has a profound sense of the worth of Humanity, and he values manners, politics, institutions, only as they bear on its progress. He clearly perceives that industry must hold the chief rank among the material interests of mankind, and consequently he bestows, as he ought, the greater part of his attention upon the state of industry and the industrious classes. We wish every traveller would do the same, not in our own country only, but in every other. By so doing the materials might at length be collected for a real history of mankind.

Born in Limoges, Haute-Vienne, Chevalier studied at the École Polytechnique, obtaining an engineering degree at the Paris École des mines in 1829.

In 1830, after the July Revolution, he became a Saint-Simonian, and edited their paper Le Globe. The paper was banned in 1832, when the „Simonian sect“ was found to be prejudicial to the social order, and Chevalier, as its editor, was sentenced to six months imprisonment.

After his release, Minister of the Interior Adolphe Thiers sent him in 1834 on a mission to the United States and Mexico, to observe the state of industrial and financial affairs in the Americas. In the United States, Chevalier visited different parts of the country studying American society, its manners and political, social, and economic institutions. He made some keen observations along the way that were published in France by the Journal des débats producing at the time „an immense effect“. In Mexico he exchanged ideas with the mineralogist and politician Andrés Manuel del Río. It was during this trip that he also developed the idea that the Spanish-speaking and Portuguese-speaking parts of the Americas shared a cultural or racial affinity with all the European peoples with a Romance culture. Chevalier postulated that this part of the Americas were inhabited by people of a „Latin race,“ which could be a natural ally of „Latin Europe“ in its struggle with „Teutonic Europe,“ „Anglo-Saxon America“ and „Slavic Europe.“ The idea was later taken up by French and Latin American intellectuals and political leaders of the mid and late nineteenth century, who no longer looked to Spain or Portugal as cultural models, but rather to France, and who coined the term „Latin America.“

In 1837, he wrote a well received work, Des intérèts matériels en France, after which his career took off. At age 35, he was appointed professor of political economy at the Collège de France.

In 1839, letters that he sent to France during his mission to North America were translated and edited by Thomas Gamaliel Bradford and published in the United States as, Society, manners and politics in the United States; being a series of letters on North America. Orestes Brownson reviewed the book and wrote that, „The work itself is highly important and interesting, and is well worth the perusal and even the study of every American citizen.“

Chevalier was an early member of the Société d’économie politique organized in 1842 by Pellegrino Rossi.[8] He was elected a député for the département of Aveyron in 1845, an appointment of Senator followed in 1860. In 1859, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Together with Richard Cobden and John Bright he prepared the free trade agreement of 1860 between the United Kingdom and France, which is still called the Cobden-Chevalier Treaty.

He died in Lodève.

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The accomplished author of this treatise has been known as one of the most earnest writers in favour of free trade, and as the champion of every cause which tends to promote the progress of an elevated civilisation, and the best interests of humanity. He has qualified himself for this task by a long and laborious study of the currency question, having given to the world some essays on money and the precious metals, which are recognised as standard works, and invest his name with an authority on such subjects, hardly second to that of Humboldt himself. In the pages of this book will be found almost every fact and argument necessary for the formation of an opinion on one of the most important problems of our day, and they are presented with all the care and conscientiousness for which the writer is so distinguished.

Born in Limoges, Haute-Vienne, Chevalier studied at the École Polytechnique, obtaining an engineering degree at the Paris École des mines in 1829.

In 1830, after the July Revolution, he became a Saint-Simonian, and edited their paper Le Globe. The paper was banned in 1832, when the „Simonian sect“ was found to be prejudicial to the social order, and Chevalier, as its editor, was sentenced to six months imprisonment.

After his release, Minister of the Interior Adolphe Thiers sent him in 1834 on a mission to the United States and Mexico, to observe the state of industrial and financial affairs in the Americas. In the United States, Chevalier visited different parts of the country studying American society, its manners and political, social, and economic institutions. He made some keen observations along the way that were published in France by the Journal des débats producing at the time „an immense effect“. In Mexico he exchanged ideas with the mineralogist and politician Andrés Manuel del Río. It was during this trip that he also developed the idea that the Spanish-speaking and Portuguese-speaking parts of the Americas shared a cultural or racial affinity with all the European peoples with a Romance culture. Chevalier postulated that this part of the Americas were inhabited by people of a „Latin race,“ which could be a natural ally of „Latin Europe“ in its struggle with „Teutonic Europe,“ „Anglo-Saxon America“ and „Slavic Europe.“ The idea was later taken up by French and Latin American intellectuals and political leaders of the mid and late nineteenth century, who no longer looked to Spain or Portugal as cultural models, but rather to France, and who coined the term „Latin America.“

In 1837, he wrote a well received work, Des intérèts matériels en France, after which his career took off. At age 35, he was appointed professor of political economy at the Collège de France.

In 1839, letters that he sent to France during his mission to North America were translated and edited by Thomas Gamaliel Bradford and published in the United States as, Society, manners and politics in the United States; being a series of letters on North America. Orestes Brownson reviewed the book and wrote that, „The work itself is highly important and interesting, and is well worth the perusal and even the study of every American citizen.“

Chevalier was an early member of the Société d’économie politique organized in 1842 by Pellegrino Rossi.[8] He was elected a député for the département of Aveyron in 1845, an appointment of Senator followed in 1860. In 1859, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Together with Richard Cobden and John Bright he prepared the free trade agreement of 1860 between the United Kingdom and France, which is still called the Cobden-Chevalier Treaty.

He died in Lodève.

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Wealth: A Brief Explanation of the Causes of Economic Wealth – Edwin Cannan

Edwin Cannan was not only a British economist and historian of economic thought, but also a professor at the London School of Economics. In this book he has managed to make room for some very fundamental matters which are often ignored in general treatises of moderate length. He refers especially to the hereditary character of inequalities of income, the inferiority of women’s earnings, and the differences in the wealth of different “countries” or “nations.”

Edwin Cannan (3 February 1861, Funchal, Madeira – 8 April 1935, Bournemouth), the son of artist Jane Cannan, was a British economist and historian of economic thought. He was a professor at the London School of Economics from 1895 to 1926.

As a partisan of Jevonianism, Edwin Cannan is perhaps best known for his logical dissection and destruction of Classical theory in his famous 1898 tract History of the Theories of Production and Distribution. Although Cannan had personal and professional difficulties with Alfred Marshall, he was still „Marshall’s man“ at the LSE from 1895 to 1926. During that time, particularly during his long stretch as chairman after 1907, Edwin Cannan shepherded the LSE away from its roots in Fabian socialism into tentative Marshallianism. This period was only to last, however, until his protégé, Lionel Robbins, took over with his more „Continental“ ideas.

Though Cannan, in his early years as an economist, was a critic of classical economics and an ally of interventionists, he moved sharply to the side of classical liberalism in the early 20th century. He favored a simplicity, clarity, and common sense in the exposition of economics. According to Geoffrey M. Hodgson, Cannan „emphasised the institutional foundation of economic systems“.

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The famous happenings of an eventful period in Boston’s early history, from the dawn of the Revolution until the town became a city, are here handled with a fresh and vigorous touch. Many little-known incidents are introduced and a large amount of material hitherto the possession of some private family is included. The chapters on the early social and literary life, the establishment of the first theatre and the famous French visitors are of special interest. Miss Crawford’s style achieves that happy mingling of historical accuracy and vivacious comment that have made her previous books so successful.

Boston is the capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. Boston is also the seat of Suffolk County, although the county government was disbanded on July 1, 1999. The city proper covers 48 square miles (124 km2) with an estimated population of 673,184 in 2016, making it the largest city in New England and the 23rd most populous city in the United States. The city is the economic and cultural anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area known as Greater Boston, a Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) home to a census-estimated 4.8 million people in 2016 and ranking as the tenth-largest such area in the country. Alternately, as a Combined Statistical Area (CSA), this wider commuting region is home to some 8.2 million people, making it the sixth-largest as such in the United States.

One of the oldest cities in the United States, Boston was founded on the Shawmut Peninsula in 1630 by Puritan settlers from England. It was the scene of several key events of the American Revolution, such as the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Siege of Boston. Upon U.S. independence from Great Britain, it continued to be an important port and manufacturing hub as well as a center for education and culture. Through land reclamation and municipal annexation, Boston has expanded beyond the original peninsula. Its rich history attracts many tourists, with Faneuil Hall alone drawing over 20 million visitors per year. Boston’s many firsts include the United States‘ first public school, Boston Latin School (1635), first subway system, the Tremont Street Subway (1897), and first public park, Boston Common (1634).

The area’s many colleges and universities make Boston an international center of higher education, including law, medicine, engineering, and business, and the city is considered to be a world leader in innovation and entrepreneurship, with nearly 2,000 startups. Boston’s economic base also includes finance, professional and business services, biotechnology, information technology, and government activities. Households in the city claim the highest average rate of philanthropy in the United States; businesses and institutions rank among the top in the country for environmental sustainability and investment. The city has one of the highest costs of living in the United States as it has undergone gentrification, though it remains high on world livability rankings.

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John Calvin begins this classic treatise on prayer by giving us a definition of prayer, emphasizing its necessity and use. He addresses the objections that some people have when it comes to prayer, such as, that prayer seems useless, because God already knows our wants. He then outlines four rules to be observed in prayer: reverence to God, a sense of our want, the suppression of all pride, and a sure confidence of being heard. He gives a good overview of different kinds of prayers: vows, supplications, petitions, thanksgivings. After he gives some guidance for the use of prayer in public worship, he gives a wonderful exposition of the Lord’s Prayer. While certain of Calvin’s arguments are addressing issues faced at the time of the Reformation, the modern reader will discover timeless truths, solidly based on God’s Word, detailing the necessity and benefits of persevering in prayer (citation from ministryformation.com.au).

John Calvin (10 July 1509 – 27 May 1564) was an influential French theologian, pastor and reformer during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism, aspects of which include the doctrines of predestination and of the absolute sovereignty of God in salvation of the human soul from death and eternal damnation, in which doctrines Calvin was influenced by and elaborated upon the Augustinian and other early Christian traditions. Various Congregational, Reformed, and Presbyterian churches, which look to Calvin as the chief expositor of their beliefs, have spread throughout the world.

Calvin was a tireless polemic and apologetic writer who generated much controversy. He also exchanged cordial and supportive letters with many reformers, including Philipp Melanchthon and Heinrich Bullinger. In addition to his seminal Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin wrote commentaries on most books of the Bible, confessional documents, and various other theological treatises.

Originally trained as a humanist lawyer, he broke from the Roman Catholic Church around 1530. After religious tensions erupted in widespread deadly violence against Protestant Christians in France, Calvin fled to Basel, Switzerland, where in 1536 he published the first edition of the Institutes. In that same year, Calvin was recruited by Frenchman William Farel to help reform the church in Geneva, where he regularly preached sermons throughout the week; but the governing council of the city resisted the implementation of their ideas, and both men were expelled. At the invitation of Martin Bucer, Calvin proceeded to Strasbourg, where he became the minister of a church of French refugees. He continued to support the reform movement in Geneva, and in 1541 he was invited back to lead the church of the city.

Following his return, Calvin introduced new forms of church government and liturgy, despite opposition from several powerful families in the city who tried to curb his authority. During this period, Michael Servetus, a Spaniard regarded by both Roman Catholics and Protestants as having a heretical view of the Trinity, arrived in Geneva. He was denounced by Calvin and burned at the stake for heresy by the city council. Following an influx of supportive refugees and new elections to the city council, Calvin’s opponents were forced out. Calvin spent his final years promoting the Reformation both in Geneva and throughout Europe.

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An animistic philosophy, explaining the more strange or striking phenomena of nature by the hypothesis of spiritual agency, is universally prevalent among savage races; and unless the wide-spread animistic beliefs of savages are to be regarded as but degenerate or corrupted relics of those possessed by more cultured peoples, a theory which can scarcely be held to account for the essential and native appropriateness of animism as it flourishes among races of low culture, and its less appropriate and apparently derivative character as it survives in higher civilisations, there seems tenable ground for the inference, that an animistic philosophy must have been that which was earliest developed among the prehistoric societies of mankind.

Animism is the oldest known type of belief system in the world that even predates paganism. It is still practiced in a variety of forms in many traditional societies. Animism is used in the anthropology of religion as a term for the belief system of many indigenous tribal peoples, especially in contrast to the relatively more recent development of organized religions. Although each culture has its own different mythologies and rituals, „animism“ is said to describe the most common, foundational thread of indigenous peoples‘ „spiritual“ or „supernatural“ perspectives. The animistic perspective is so widely held and inherent to most animistic indigenous peoples that they often do not even have a word in their languages that corresponds to „animism“ (or even „religion“); the term is an anthropological construct.

Largely due to such ethnolinguistic and cultural discrepancies, opinion has differed on whether animism refers to an ancestral mode of experience common to indigenous peoples around the world, or to a full-fledged religion in its own right. The currently accepted definition of animism was only developed in the late 19th century by Sir Edward Tylor, who created it as „one of anthropology’s earliest concepts, if not the first“.

Animism encompasses the beliefs that all material phenomena have agency, that there exists no hard and fast distinction between the spiritual and physical (or material) world, and that soul or spirit or sentience exists not only in humans, but also in other animals, plants, rocks, geographic features such as mountains or rivers, or other entities of the natural environment, including thunder, wind, and shadows. Animism thus rejects Cartesian dualism. Animism may further attribute souls to abstract concepts such as words, true names, or metaphors in mythology. Some members of the non-tribal world also consider themselves animists (such as author Daniel Quinn, sculptor Lawson Oyekan, and many contemporary Pagans).

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The successor in our day to both Jules Verne and Edward Bellamy is H. G. Wells, and his book, „The World Set Free,“ embodies more of his creed than anything heretofore published. The goal of Mr. Wells‘ thinking is the end of war and the realization upon earth of a real „parliament of the world.“ This outcome is to be reached, not as in Bellamy’s scheme by peaceful evolution, but only after the present social order has been rent asunder by the release of certain elemental physical forces to be revealed to man through processes similar to those that have led to the great discoveries and inventions of the more recent past. The only way by which war could be finally abolished, according to Mr. Wells, was through the demonstration of overwhelming destructiveness of these new physical agencies under partial human control. The phrase „atomic energy“ is much used by Mr. Wells in describing this tremendous power that brings about the practical disintegration of the physical world as we know it today, and he prepares the reader for his disclosures concerning this explosive force by recalling the discoveries of radio-activity and the work of Marconi and their applications in our own industrial life. In this his method closely follows that of Jules Verne. On the side of social and political construction Mr. Wells is possibly less convincing, but considering the fact that he is compelled to presuppose a situation far removed from anything that this generation can easily imagine, this is not strange.

The World Set Free is a novel written in 1913 and published in 1914 by H. G. Wells. The book is based on a prediction of nuclear weapons of a more destructive and uncontrollable sort than the world has yet seen. It had appeared first in serialised form with a different ending as A Prophetic Trilogy, consisting of three books: A Trap to Catch the Sun, The Last War in the World and The World Set Free.

A frequent theme of Wells’s work, as in his 1901 nonfiction book Anticipations, was the history of humans‘ mastery of power and energy through technological advance, seen as a determinant of human progress. The novel begins: „The history of mankind is the history of the attainment of external power. Man is the tool-using, fire-making animal. . . . Always down a lengthening record, save for a set-back ever and again, he is doing more.“ (Many of the ideas Wells develops here found a fuller development when he wrote The Outline of History in 1918-1919.) The novel is dedicated „To Frederick Soddy’s Interpretation of Radium,“ a volume published in 1909.

Scientists of the time were well aware that the slow natural radioactive decay of elements like radium continues for thousands of years, and that while the rate of energy release is negligible, the total amount released is huge. Wells used this as the basis for his story. In his fiction,

The problem which was already being mooted by such scientific men as Ramsay, Rutherford, and Soddy, in the very beginning of the twentieth century, the problem of inducing radio-activity in the heavier elements and so tapping the internal energy of atoms, was solved by a wonderful combination of induction, intuition, and luck by Holsten so soon as the year 1933.
Wells’s knowledge of atomic physics came from reading William Ramsay, Ernest Rutherford, and Frederick Soddy; the last discovered the disintegration of uranium. Soddy’s book Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt praises The World Set Free. Wells’s novel may even have influenced the development of nuclear weapons, as the physicist Leó Szilárd read the book in 1932, the same year the neutron was discovered. In 1933 Szilárd conceived the idea of neutron chain reaction, and filed for patents on it in 1934.

Wells’s „atomic bombs“ have no more force than ordinary high explosive and are rather primitive devices detonated by a „bomb-thrower“ biting off „a little celluloid stud.“ They consist of „lumps of pure Carolinum“ that induce „a blazing continual explosion“ whose half-life is seventeen days, so that it is „never entirely exhausted,“ so that „to this day the battle-fields and bomb fields of that frantic time in human history are sprinkled with radiant matter, and so centres of inconvenient rays.“

Never before in the history of warfare had there been a continuing explosive; indeed, up to the middle of the twentieth century the only explosives known were combustibles whose explosiveness was due entirely to their instantaneousness; and these atomic bombs which science burst upon the world that night were strange even to the men who used them. Wells observes:

Certainly it seems now that nothing could have been more obvious to the people of the earlier twentieth century than the rapidity with which war was becoming impossible. And as certainly they did not see it. They did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their fumbling hands […] All through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the amount of energy that men were able to command was continually increasing. Applied to warfare that meant that the power to inflict a blow, the power to destroy, was continually increasing […]There was no increase whatever in the ability to escape […]Destruction was becoming so facile that any little body of malcontents could use it […]Before the last war began it was a matter of common knowledge that a man could carry about in a handbag an amount of latent energy sufficient to wreck half a city.
Wells viewed war as the inevitable result of the Modern State; the introduction of atomic energy in a world divided resulted in the collapse of society. The only possibilities remaining were „either the relapse of mankind to agricultural barbarism from which it had emerged so painfully or the acceptance of achieved science as the basis of a new social order.“ Wells’s theme of world government is presented as a solution to the threat of nuclear weapons.

From the first they had to see the round globe as one problem; it was impossible any longer to deal with it piece by piece. They had to secure it universally from any fresh outbreak of atomic destruction, and they had to ensure a permanent and universal pacification.
The devastation of the war leads the French ambassador at Washington, Leblanc, to summon world leaders to a conference at Brissago, where Britain’s „King Egbert“ sets an example by abdicating in favor of a world state. Such is the state of the world’s exhaustion that the effective coup of this „council“ („Never, of course, had there been so provisional a government. It was of an extravagant illegality.“) is resisted only in a few places. The defeat of Serbia’s „King Ferdinand Charles“ and his attempt to destroy the council and seize control of the world is narrated in some detail.

Brought to its senses, humanity creates a utopian order along Wellsian lines in short order. Atomic energy has solved the problem of work. In the new order „the majority of our population consists of artists.“

The World Set Free concludes with a chapter recounting the reflections of one of the new order’s sages, Marcus Karenin, during his last days. Karenin argues that knowledge and power, not love, are the essential vocation of humanity, and that „There is no absolute limit to either knowledge or power.“

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